By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoor Perspective
Their world is one of reindeer lichen, black spruce, balsam fir and tamaracks.
I entered this world wearing a mosquito head net and body completely covered, including lightweight leather gloves, even though it was a warm May day. In late spring, blackflies dominate this world, to the point of even having to cover my Canon GL-2 camcorder lens as I tried to video one of the rarest of New York nonmigratory birds — the spruce grouse.
In the end, I succeeded in getting some footage, but at a price. My left hand, which I used to steady the recorder, however, was oozing blood where a blackfly had gnawed the exposed wrist area.
Penetrating a spruce grouse's very limited world, actually an island of boreal forest surrounded by typical northern hardwood and mixed forests found in the Spring Pond Bog area of Franklin County, was worth it back in 2003, and still would be worth the trip this spring. Today, there may be as few as a couple hundred of these chicken-like birds left in northern New York, and they are only found in scattered pockets, absent even from habitat that seems made especially for them.
Our party, consisting of members of the Nature Conservancy, me and Dr. Glenn Johnson, biology professor at SUNY Potsdam, searched out these rare grouse in late May because that is spruce grouse breeding season, and Dr. Johnson had three male birds already collared. Spruce grouse (scientific name Canachites canadensis) drum while flying down from a tree branch, unlike their cousin the ruffed grouse (Bonsa umbellus), which drums while prancing about on a downed log.
Both types of grouse differ physically, as well. Male spruce grouse appear mostly dark, with some white bars on their breast, and they have a distinct red patch over each eye. Females are brown and lack the red eye patches. Male ruffed grouse are a warm brown and have a continuous black outer band on their tail. Both male and female ruffed grouse have head feather crests.
Because female spruce grouse are similar in coloration to ruffed grouse, they are vulnerable where territory overlaps and people hunt the ruffed variety. The loss of one female spruce grouse can lead to the demise of a local population; that is how fragile and isolated their existence is. This isolation can also create another problem: genetic inbreeding. Currently, there is debate over whether to bring in spruce grouse from northern Canada, where they are common, to bolster the local enclaves and add genetic diversity, but this could also mean the loss of the uniqueness that some feel has evolved from long periods of isolation.
In the area I visited in 2003, spruce grouse eat berries, insects and most importantly, conifer tree needles. Johnson stressed back then the need for forest succession — varying sizes of these softwoods — over a mature climax boreal forest. Selective logging is needed to maintain this habitat, and the land we were on was not state forest preserve land, but private, so it could be tailored for the spruce grouse.
Besides human development and accidental shooting, spruce grouse mortality can come from natural enemies that include any of our four-legged predators that may pass through such a forest type — fisher, marten, red fox — or aerial attackers like hawks and owls. Often called "fool hen" because of their seeming lack of fear in approaching humans or letting humans get close to them, spruce grouse are often mentioned, along with the porcupine, as survival food in the north.
What is interesting is that on the day Dr. Johnson led us to his three collared male spruce grouse, he tried to capture a fourth, an uncollared bird, but it was too wary and kept flying out of the reach of his long net.
"So much for easy survival food," I said to myself.
Right now, there may be six of these spruce grouse islands in New York, all in the North Country. From my own experience, places like the Osgood Pond Outlet area near Paul Smiths and the Upper Chubb River Valley would seem like good habitat locally, along with Bloomingdale Bog, though there has been, as far as I know, no spruce grouse confirmed in these areas. Maybe the day will come when outside birds are released and corridors open between spruce grouse enclaves. Until then, just getting into their world remains a long hard trek, often compounded in the spring by hoards of biting flies.
Field Notes
The Lake Champlain Turkey Callers National Wild Turkey Federation Banquet will be held at the Peru VFW at 5 p.m. Saturday, March 27.
E-mail Dennis Aprill at daprill2000@yahoo.com and check out our Web site at www.pressrepublican.com/0105_outdoor_perspective for more photos and past articles.
